The Member of Parliament for the Bolgatanga Central constituency, Isaac Adongo has slammed the governing New Patriotic Party for the rising debt stock blaming it on the government’s lack of fiscal discipline.
The Deputy Ranking Member of Parliament’s Finance Committee said the reasons the government keeps giving for Ghana’s economic mess are farfetched because other African countries are equally faced with the same factors but aren’t in the same debt league as Ghana.
Speaking on the Point of View on Citi TV, Mr. Adongo “said other African countries are not debt-burdened as Ghana because they managed their fiscal space well in order to create buffers such that when problems occurred, they had some scope within which they can contain such problems.”
He added that Ghana was already spending well over its means before the breakout of COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine War which meant an astronomical percentage of the nation’s revenue was used to service debts accrued due to the government’s indiscipline.
“At the time COVID-19 arrived, we were already using 91 percent of our tax revenue to finance debt and so we were left with just 9 percent to deal with other matters.
“In 2021, we did 129 percent of debt service to total revenue and grants and so it wasn’t about COVID-19 or the Russia-Ukraine War but about the fact that we had mismanaged our fiscal to the extent that we had extended the fiscal risk.”
Ghana’s total public debt stock had shot up to GH¢575.7 billion as of the end of November 2022.
Ghana is currently debt-burdened and the country is set to send a delegation to China in the coming weeks to plead for debt forgiveness while it is working to secure a $3 billion financial facility from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
